


Inside-out, Outside-in

by KateKintail



Series: The Great Beyond [26]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Adoption, Children, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-01
Updated: 2013-01-01
Packaged: 2017-11-27 09:12:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,562
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/660273
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KateKintail/pseuds/KateKintail
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Harry is overworked but for a good reason.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Inside-out, Outside-in

**Author's Note:**

> Set a long while before my fic ‘Lots Can Happen in Five Minutes’. A big thank you to RC for setting me straight about what CPS is referred to over the pond. 
> 
> Disclaimer: JKR’s characters… my own post-series AU… I make no money and mean no harm. I’m truly just playing around in JKR’s playground for fun.

His head was splitting open. He hadn’t felt this sort of shooting pain since the days when Voldemort had been particularly vengeful. And though Voldemort was definitely dead and gone— and had been for more than two years— the destruction he had brought about still remained. Harry set his quill down and put both elbows on the kitchen table. He hung his head in his hands, feeling his head throbbing against his fingers. Things seemed a bit better when he closed his eyes, but he couldn’t do his work with his eyes closed. And he couldn’t go to bed until the work was done.   
  
    “Harry, are you really still here?”  
  
    Harry thought it was pretty stupid question. Ginny could clearly see he was sitting at the table. He didn’t bother lifting his head. It was better just to keep his eyes closed and take advantage of this. If Ginny were here, he wouldn’t be able to work anyway; she’d talk too much for him to concentrate.  
  
    “Teddy’s asleep.”  
  
    “Thanks.” After he and Ginny got settled in their house, Harry had insisted on taking charge of his Godson at least a few times a month. Teddy’s grandmother welcomed the nights off, and Harry and Ginny enjoyed having him. Tonight, however, Harry had let his wife put the boy to bed. He’d check in on Teddy in an hour or two.  
  
    “You’re working too hard.”  
  
    Harry lifted his head and sighed. “I know, Ginny, I know. But it can’t be helped.” He stared down at his piles of papers and reshuffled them. The change in light and his moving around made his head hurt worse for a moment, and he winced.   
  
    Ginny’s eyes were on fire, like her hair. She dragged another of the kitchen table chairs over and plopped down right beside. “Harry Potter, you stop working and come to bed this instant. I’ll not have you working yourself into the ground. You’re not invulnerable.”  
  
    “Don’t you think I know that?” He pressed his hand to his forehead. “Please don’t nag. My head’s killing me.”   
  
    “I’d imagine so. You’ve barely slept these past two days. Rebuilding the Ministry is important, sure, but it’s not worth this.”   
  
    “It is,” he whispered, resisting the urge to close his eyes and keep them closed. But his head pounded harder and it made his stomach feel a bit off. “Mrs. Kaminski retired this week. She was getting up there, and I knew she wouldn’t be there forever, but…”  
  
    Ginny pulled her hand off the papers and picked up Harry’s hand instead. “Oh, Harry. I’m so sorry.”   
  
    Harry nodded and took a deep breath to steady himself. Rebuilding the Ministry practically from scratch had been hard work. Though they’d asked Harry to do it, Harry felt much more comfortable with Kingsley as Minister of Magic. This left him free to do the organizing and micromanage everything until it got going the right way. He had hand-picked Mrs. Kaminski personally and she had been the only one he’d trusted with his most special, most cherished new division of the Ministry. Now that she was gone-- and he couldn’t blame her, because she had come out of retirement for him in the first place and had been up-front about not staying more than a year—Harry felt it necessary to take this on in addition to his other work.  
  
    He looked at her imploringly. “I know you’re angry with me, but do you think you could do that… that thing you did last time?”  
  
    Ginny smiled. “Of course, Sweetheart.” She got up and stood behind him. She pressed her fingers to his temples and rubbed in a circle. She ran her fingertips across his forehead, applying just the right amount of pressure. “How’s that?”  
  
    “Knew there was a reason I married you. Merlin, Ginny. You should be a healer.”  
  
    “Hmm. The five year contract the Harpies had me sign says differently.”   
  
    “Yeah, well- oh. Ohhhhh right there, Gin. Just like that.”   
  
    Ginny giggled and continued to massage his scalp. Her hands were almost completely covered in the untidy black hair, which was even untidier at the end of a long day. She dug her fingers in, rubbing, and soon his head was bobbing and rolling to her movements.   
  
    Harry sighed. “Don’t supposed you could keep this up for the rest of the night? I’ve got a few hours of paperwork left ahead of me.”  
  
    Laughing, Ginny leaned over and kissed his cheek. “I love you, Harry Potter, but I’m not crazy. You’ve got ten more minutes, then I’m off to bed with or without you.”   
  
    “Without,” Harry muttered. “M’sorry. But I’ve really got to see to these files. No one else will.”   
  
    “I understand.”  
  
    He thought about getting up to give her a hug, but just couldn’t make his body move from its seat.  
  
    “Call if you need anything.” She rubbed at his temples again. “But don’t call too loudly or you’ll wake Teddy and two bedtime stories is where I draw my line. Unless… you’ve got one for me.”  
  
    “I’ll do my best.”  
  
    After Ginny went to bed, Harry stared down at his papers. Without his wife’s touch, his headache came back in full force, but he felt more relaxed now and more determined to get his work done. Everyone deserved this; everyone deserved what he had.   
  
    He read through the top piece of paper, which seemed to take forever. He flipped to the next, and reading that seemed to take hours. When he got to the end, he got his wand out. He touched it to the paper and the word APPROVED in sparkling red letters. He set it aside and eyed the stack. With a sigh, he pushed the whole thing away and picked up a different stack. This one was a stack of file folders, each one labeled ‘Magical Social Services- Child’.   
  
    Rebuilding the Ministry of Magic, department by department, had been a grueling task, but one Harry knew he had to take on as soon as he’d set the repairing of Hogwarts in motion. His first move- even before getting a Minister of Magic- was to establish the Social Services department. His Godson wasn’t the only child to lose parents in the war. There were many children not as lucky as Teddy, who at least still had some family left. There were families that needed support and children who needed families. And Harry knew better than anyone else how important it was that these children get taken care of properly.   
  
    The world might have been much different if a young Tom Riddle had been taken in by a supportive, loving, magical family instead of a muggle orphanage. Though Harry couldn’t place all the blame on that, he knew well it hadn’t helped any.   
  
     These children, already raised in magical households, needed to be looked after by people who at least understood what that meant. His long-term goal for the agency was to aid in the identifications and transitions of muggle-borns, so it wasn’t such a shock to the children or their families. They would be able to increase understanding and hopefully make the muggle-born thing a non-issue after a generation or two made it to Hogwarts. But for now, the primary focus was finding homes for the children.  
  
    And that meant identifying said children, recruiting and inspecting foster families, and making proper matches. There were interviews and background checks aplenty, but time was also a crucial factor. Mrs. Kaminski had had no fewer than a two dozen people working under her, but she had been in charge of overseeing every chart, performing most of the matches, and having the last say in everything. Most of the time she performed the final rounds of interviews and was present during the meet-ups of foster parents and placed children.   
  
    It was a lot of work for Harry to suddenly find in his lap. Having had very little experience taking care of children, he was eager to find a trustworthy replacement for Mrs. Kaminski, but that decision and appointment couldn’t be made overnight. And in the meantime, there were children who needed homes. His first obligation— even above sleep— was to them.  
  
    Harry shuffled through the pile of children’s files and pulled out one file. The picture clipped to the top was of a young boy of twelve, with dark eyes and blonde hair. He was a cute kid and as good as any to start with. “All right now, Erik Hastings,” Harry said to the photo. “Let’s find you a good home, shall we?”  
  
     Harry read through the boy’s history. His mother had died in childbirth and his father had been an Unmentionable at the Ministry who’d died on the job during the takeover. The boy had been living in a muggle orphanage in Kent for the last few years. Harry flipped through the rest of the file. The boy’s grade school marks were acceptable, and he got pretty good marks at Hogwarts as well. But there were pages and pages of reprimands and detentions documented on his transcript. For the most part the offenses weren’t serious- mostly trouble-making just for the fun of it. Harry got a strangely eerie feeling of familiarity while reading. However, there were a few cases of his running away from the orphanage. He got to the end, which was a letter written by Erik himself. Harry fought off the tears. Apparently, the boy had a twin brother out there somewhere. He refused to be placed anywhere without his brother, and who could blame him?  
  
    Harry dove into the stack, thumbing through the files until he found one with a photo that could have been of the same boy. Instead of just smiling at the camera, this one’s head was cocked and he was smiling a bit slyly. Why hadn’t these two been placed together initially? Harry flipped past the first page, which was almost identical to Erik’s, and found his answer on the top of the second page of the boy’s history. Justin Hastings had gone to a juvenile detention facility in Shellingsford just after their father’s funeral because he’d set a car on fire. It hadn’t been his fault, according to the caseworker who’d been looking into their case this week. Justin had been emotionally distraught and had done it inadvertently with magic. But the muggle police and judge hadn’t seen it that way. “All the more reason you should be fostered with a family that understands about magic,” Harry said, wondering how any child his age could be expected to cope with the loss of his father by being taken away from his twin brother, the only family he had left. No wonder Erik kept running away and heading in the direction of Shellingsford.   
  
    The recommendations of the caseworkers who’d gone to see each boy was for a home where there would be rules, routines, and enough room for two growing young boys to have fun. They’d need parents who were understanding and patient, but unafraid to lay down the law if the boys got too out of line.   
  
    Immediately, Harry knew what to do. He ran to the living room, since the kitchen’s fireplace was for cooking and not connected to the Floo Network. He tossed in a handful of powder and hoped someone was at home. “Hello?” he called, once he’d stuck his head into the flames. “Anybody around?” He called out a little louder than he probably should have for that time of night. He didn’t really want to wake anyone up, but he was desperate to speak about this.  
  
    Thankfully, George Weasley appeared there a second later, not wearing pajamas but regular robes. “Hullo, Harry. Where’s the fire?”  
  
    “Ha ha.” Harry felt the flames licking his ears. Seeing everything through a flooey haze made his headache worse. But he had to get through this. “Listen, George, are you and Lee still interested in fostering a child?”  
  


~ * ~

  
  
    It was late when Harry finally made his way up the staircase—which seemed twice as long as normal for some reason. He pulled himself up with the banister, exhausted by the time he reached the top. With his hand pressed to his forehead, he made his way down the hallway. He was beginning to feel sick to his stomach for all the pounding and the ache in his temples.   
  
    Harry still checked in on Teddy, and he even found himself leaning against the doorjamb. He watched Teddy sleep— the most ordinary, boring thing, watching someone sleep— and he loved it. There was nothing so soothing was watching that scene. The little chest rising and falling under the snitch-print sheets. The amber eyes were shut peacefully and the mouth was open. The brown hair with its purple streaks fell over part of his face. He wanted to go brush it out, but feared his touch would be too heavy.   
  
    He pulled himself back and closed the door softly. Then he stumbled down the hallway, barged into his bedroom, and collapsed into bed. He felt like whimpering, like moaning, but he bit his tongue. He couldn’t wake Ginny.  
  
    “Harry, are you still hurting?”  
  
    Nodding, Harry hugged his pillow to his chest and curled up. His whole head throbbed painfully, taking over his whole body. The pain was so fierce he didn’t even notice Ginny’s body against his or her hands on his forehead until after she’d begun rubbing.   
  
    He gave it a moment or two and then sighed deeply. “Ginny, you angel. You should be asleep.”  
  
    “Mmm,” she agreed. “How about we both stop saying what the other should do and just try to relax? You lie here and not work, and I’ll rub your head and not nag.”  
  
    “You don’t nag,” Harry protested.  
  
    “I do. I’m like my mother. I worry about you. Can’t help it.”  
  
    “There are worse things.” Harry smiled. Then he rolled over, snuggled into her, laid his head on her breast, and closed his eyes. “You’re amazing, Ginny Potter. You’re a beautiful woman, a loving wife, a star chaser, and a pretty soon you’re going to be an auntie again.”   
  
    Ginny’s fingers froze in mid-circle against Harry’s temples. “Excuse me?”  
  
    Harry smiled and opened his bright green eyes. “That is, if two boys named Erik and Justin want George and Lee to be their foster parents.”   
  
    Ginny bounced in place and squealed out loud. She grabbed Harry and hugged him, squeezing so tightly he might have been sick if not for the feeling of elation spreading through him. He thought of his mother-in-law back during the war, about her strengths and about her fear of what would happen to her children if she and Arthur were to die. He thought about that time he’d seen Remus comforting her, not telling her that she wouldn’t die but that her children would have a home if she did. And he thought about his Godson, happily stretched out in his little bed, sleeping soundly.  
  
    The Magical Social Services program was so close to Harry’s heart, and every child that was placed was special to him. But there was something especially special when those children might just become part of his family.   
  
    Completely ignoring the pain shooting through his head, he lifted an arm, wrapped it around Ginny, and used what was left of his strength to hug her back.


End file.
